


Nár Fölr

by steevee



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Vampires, Vikings, what more do u need
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 09:30:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11964588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steevee/pseuds/steevee
Summary: Toki's life takes a twist of fate, and then another one.The first (posted) part of a shared vampire au between myself, @bjornkram, and @metal-for-fish on tumblr. Set loosely in viking times.100% inspired by What We Do in the Shadows, though it isn't really obvious in this one.





	Nár Fölr

Over and over again, the sound of hard metal splitting wood ricocheted over the rolling grass that separated Toki’s home from the forest surrounding it, like a golden pool in the middle of a briny black ocean.  At this hour the sun painted everything in shades of tawny and amber and it shone almost too little for this sort of chore, but if there was one thing that his parents never failed to convey despite their vow of silence, it was that his work was notoriously slow and lazy. So it would come as no surprise to any of them that cutting a few cords of firewood could carry him into the evening, or perhaps past.

Chopping logs didn't bother him and nor did being out near nightfall, and Toki was in no mood to rush himself despite how the foreboding night breeze nipped at his exposed arms. He welcomed the peace between swings and the repetitive motion of the task, let his mind fade into the action and drift away into the treetops like a roosting bird. As the clouds began to blush redder and redder, the pile of lumber behind him grew steadily until it was almost enough to measure up to his shoulder. A little more and then tomorrow he would haul it off to arrange in the intricate pattern his father favored. That was another task in itself.

For now he resolved to settle into his work and salvage the time he had left before having to worry about the next thing. After all, what was left of the day was calm and quiet, and there was no use in wasting that. Even swinging his axe, ignoring how it stretched his muscles, was pretty fun.

As he hefted the axe up once again to bring it down upon the log he was quartering, a scream, high and piercing and unfamiliar, split through the air. He paused, running the sound of it against the memory of all the animals he knew, and then it hit him.

Toki tore across the field toward the house with his hatchet in hand, scenarios already flitting over each other in his imagination. His mother, splitting her hand open in the kitchen. Tumbling over the stone stoop of their home and her feeble old bones shattering on impact. Attacked by some fearsome wild animal consumed by bloodlust. Or even, maybe, his father.

He gripped the tool in his palm and steeled himself for the possibilities. By the time he reached the center of the field, Toki could see the source of the commotion. A party of men, at least half a dozen of them, made a semicircle of tunics and weapons at the front of the house. Near the head of the group he caught eye of several blades, but most of the men only carried axes.

Before his eyes, the first man to reach their farm drew his sword and plunged it through his father's ribcage. First he too screamed, then crumpled, his dark robes spread upon the ground like a dropped blanket. His mother stood up straight a few paces behind at the door while the men stepped over the dying Aslaug and continued their advance.

It was already too late. Realizing that snapped something in Toki’s mind, just as the lead viking snapped his mother's throat in his meaty fist and she too dropped. He felt his knees buckle and the next thing he knew, he was face down in the wheat.

This couldn't be happening. Yet, it was.

Why would raiders target them? His family lived far inland, and had nothing as far as Toki knew except for their meager farm and the church. The _church_.

They had come because of the church. His ears rung, head hollow except for the beat of that thought. _The church, the church. Fuck, the church._ Hours passed, and then eons, without anything to placate the dull pounding. Dirt ground into his forehead and stuck to his cheeks and chin, but the very idea of sitting up paralyzed him physically and mentally. There was just nothing-- nothing but the frozen shrillness of his fear. In the distance, men laughed and howled in jovial, warlike revelry.

Smoke seeped through the air and down into the grass. A bonfire, by the sounds of merriment accompanying it. At some point the field itself began to crackle and hiss under the fire's toll. Silently, he willed it closer, to come and claim him for being a coward. If it wouldn't punish him Father would, provided he was still alive. And when everything quieted, it was that irrational thought that drove him back to the house.

All the vikings were gone. The last fragment of the evening sun dipped just above the horizon, and Toki stood at the path in front of his house as it smoldered away. He barely registered his axe slipping from his open fingers and tumbling onto the dirt.

His parents' bodies had been moved to lie just out of the fire, their white collars sullied by dark red blood. It didn't make sense, he thought faintly. They died cleanly right before his eyes, but now their throats were split open into ugly gashes. Whose custom was that? The blood was more than he'd ever experienced, soaked into their robes and pooled on the path, and it infiltrated every breath that he took with its stench.

Toki passed over a wreck of muscle and tendons and reached for his mother's face. Her cheek felt cold, rough and creased under his fingertips. Of course it was. He didn't know why it should be soft. His next impulse was to embrace her body like he'd never been allowed, but in the end the idea of bringing himself closer to the half-congealed mess at her neck repulsed him away. It was just as well. She couldn’t do much for him like this, not that she ever had.

He did not want to look at his father but forced himself anyway, just in case life clung to him by some holy man’s miracle. It did not, and Toki finally exhaled.

Shockingly, time continued to pass while he sat there. Darkness crept in around the corners of his vision, though the house in flames kept most of it at bay. Ironically, it looked like they wouldn't be needing firewood.

Behind him, earth crunched under someone's footfall. Toki's family had few neighbors, but the smoke must have been enough spectacle to draw someone there. Someone was here to help. They would know what to do. Turning to face them, relief washed over his damp cheeks.

It was not anyone he knew, but a stranger. A tall man, whose moonlit features loomed over him hawkishly. As if made of moonlight itself, he stretched his long legs in one liquid motion that carried him to Toki.

He said nothing, but his face shone bright and pale in the light from the fire, slanted nose and full lips almost maidenly fair. Betraying nothing of his intentions, the man only stood and stared through piercing narrow eyes. Faced by the enormous blaze, he glowed against the darkness.

"My- my parents," Toki's words tangled together in his mouth, dribbling out like bile. A fear struck up in him that this being, for he couldn't have been human, might not even understand him. Did elves- or angels, if his parents' faith reigned true after all (and oh, would he go to Hell then)- speak in the same tongues as men?

If he could speak, he evidently didn't need to. The angel offered his slender hand down to Toki. Swallowing his reservations about whatever fate might come of it, he reached up and grabbed ahold.

Expecting a soft touch, or maybe even something rough and sort of manly, Toki jolted when icy fingers bit into his palm. Unthinking, he snatched his hand away and clutched it to him. There was nothing, no angel or god, that felt like that.

Just corpses.

"Draugr!" Toki gasped, as if the real name of the creature would send it away from him. All pretenses dropped, the ghostly white figure descended upon him while he cowered on his knees. His hands were still wet with his parents' blood, his cheeks coated in dirt stained on by old tears and streaked with new ones. Only a few feet away his parents' mutilated bodies lay strewn over the path like ragdolls, but the draugr had no interest in them.

In the second he had to turn and run, the unholy thing grabbed him. Its piercing nails tore into his arms and pinned him against the earth in a constricting grip. It held him down until all the fight leaked out of him no matter how violently he screamed and thrashed, and eventually Toki's body jerked, shuddered, and seized before dropping limp entirely.

While his head lolled, he caught a glimpse into the creature's eyes and saw searing blue. Not like his own, so limpid that they were almost nothing, but intense and electrifying. The lightning in them was so pure, its cold fire skinned him from the inside out and filled his limbs with prickling needles.

In a flash of corpse pale the draugr flew at his throat. Two white-hot blades lodged in his neck and the burning traveled down through his veins as he choked on his own scream. Toki bucked his head forward hard, aiming for the thing’s skull and caught someone's stringy hair in his mouth, but then his nose grazed fabric and cold flesh and that would have to do. He bit down and heard his teeth snap through skin just as something sickly and bitter oozed onto his tongue.

The monster cried out with the voice of a man and ripped itself away from Toki. More of the acrid taste flooded his mouth. The draugr had fallen backwards onto its ass, sending a cascade of yellow hair over its bloodied face.  

"No," it gasped in what sounded like horror, clutching at its shoulder with one clawed hand. "You shouldn't have--"

So it could be injured. Good. Toki grasped blindly at the ground for his handaxe, ignoring the unsteady throb of his own pulse at his throat. His fingers grazed a familiar wooden handle.

"Stop!" The man-like thing bellowed, now cowering before him as he pulled himself up to his knees and dragged himself across the path toward it, weapon in hand.

 _Pah!_ Thought Toki while his mind pinwheeled in a mire of swirling black ichor, turning like a mill slowly filling with thick oily mud.

When he tried to lift his axe, he found that the handle no longer connected to a tiny hatchet. It weighed as much as a great battleaxe, affixed to the ground like the side of a tremendous mountain. His joints cried out in pain against the sheer weight of it in his palm, and he made a wordless noise as dread boiled up his throat. Again, the rhythm of his pulse thundered in his ears, off-kilter and beating itself into a lopsided frenzy. Beyond the rush of his blood, everything else shifted into a blurred haze. The world went rapidly diagonal.

"I told you, didn’t I?" he heard the draugr mumble when his head hit the ground. Then the blackness swallowed him.

**Author's Note:**

> draugr- (Norse mythology) ghost, spirit, undead. From Proto-Germanic *draugaz (“delusion, mirage, illusion”).  
> nár-fölr- corpse-pale, used to describe the skin tone of draugar. 
> 
> ALSO HERE'S SOME REAL COOL ART @BJORNKRAM MADE BASED ON THIS AS I WAS EDITING IT  
> http://bit.ly/2xBCcsh


End file.
